Bitcoin: What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet.

-Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Bitcoin is suffering from an identity crisis. There are three different coins that claim they are real Bitcoin: Bitcoin Core (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV).

Will the real Bitcoin please stand up?

Contention over the name Bitcoin happens because there have been disagreements on future roadmaps for Bitcoin. When these disagreements have not been resolved amicably Bitcoin has split creating two coins with new communities battling over which coin should be called Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a complicated topic in the best circumstances. Discerning the technical differences that are part of a fork is beyond all but the most dedicated and curious people. Add in there is a lot of noise on social media campaigning for one coin or another and the confusion over Bitcoin becomes intense quickly.

Media and Wall Street, for the most part, have operated as if BTC as Bitcoin.

In my opinion Wall Street is in for a shock in the next year. Let’s break this down a bit.

BTC is controlled by a group of developers called Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core is majority funded by Blockstream. In reality, BTC has been purposely crippled so that Blockstream can create a market for it’s products via Lightning Network and sidechains. The reason Bitcoin fees skyrocketed to $50+ during the bubble in late 2017 is BTC hit it’s artificially small Blockstream imposed blocksize limit. This limit has not changed. Should BTC experience another surge in transactions high fees would return. Blockstream is not interested in resolving this issue as it threaten their business model of selling sidechains. BTC is no longer Bitcoin. BTC is a vehicle for Blockstream to experiment with markets in a way that creates opportunities for their products.

Despite all of the above BTC price is what CNBC reports on. CNBC is reporting on, and keeping in place, the false impression that BTC has anything to do with Bitcoin. The public has no idea.

To explain what happened with BTC and why BCH forked watch this video:

Bitcoin Cash, the first fork from BTC, was comprised of all the players who fought against the Blockstream controlled BTC roadmap for years. There was new hope for Bitcoin again as BCH was free to scale transaction capacity without Blockstream roadblocks. Unfortunately this did not last long as the parties inside BCH failed to reach agreement on several technical matters and BCH was scheduled to split. I covered this in A Bitcoin Call To Arms.

On November 15 2018 BSV split from BCH. BSV was born. The expectation was that BCH and BSV would have a hash battle (miners would choose a winner, the losing coin dies) and there would be only one survivor. This is how Bitcoin is designed to work to avoid multiple versions of Bitcoin and to keep the network strong. The hash battle was short circuited by an unexpected move made by BCH. The video below shows that BCH had implemented “centralized checkpointing” which would negate any attempt to use hash power and Nakamoto Consensus to resolve the dispute. This plan to collude with exchanges ahead of a split by BCH throws a major red flag as to the legitimacy of BCH as a coin.

And then there is BSV, the fork of BCH which was the fork of BTC. Where BCH started to distance themselves from the Bitcoin Whitepaper BSV has committed to restoring features of Bitcoin that were removed by BTC and Blockstream. The goal is to revert Bitcoin to version .1 which included several features that were disabled by Blockstream. Most importantly, BSV is working to scale on-chain which means the Bitcoin miners, AKA the network, are incentivized to keep security and capacity humming along. There are concrete reasons to scale on-chain and to do it quickly including the upcoming halvening of mining rewards in 2020. At that point Bitcoin will need to rely more heavily on transaction fees to support hashing power. Bitcoin is an economic system. The fact BTC and BCH ignore the economics when the halvening affects them all shows their incentives are not aligned with Bitcoin. Bitcoin was designed as an economic system. BSV is the only coin engaged in scaling for the future according to original design.

So here we are today with Crypto down 90% from the highs. There are multiple versions of Bitcoin all claiming to be the real thing. CNBC reports almost exclusively on the Blockstream controlled BTC currently trading on critical support of $3,500 … and which I expect to go to zero in 2020.

Still with me? You are obviously a Crypto vet. I promise you no one who has not been heavily invested in Crypto made it past the first few paragraphs. And again, this is part of the problem with the name Bitcoin.

Ever try to explain to a friend the difference between BTC, BCH and BSV? How far did you get? Exactly. It’s nearly impossible.

I predict we will see a major upheaval in Crypto markets in 2019/2020. This could be a slow bleed of BTC price and then a sudden surge in BSV. Another scenario is everything is dumped all at once. A major capitulation. Out of the ashes only BSV rises.

In the meantime the markets are flying blind following the lead of a broken BTC. Despite the wrongheaded coverage and analysis on CNBC, BTC has no future.

BCH has some momentum as the BTC alternative but also suffers from broken economics. The BCH developers are cowboys shooting from the hip, changing the basic protocol every six months. BCH is ill prepared for when the miner reward is cut in half in 2020. This won’t end well for BCH.

Bitcoin is a genius level system. BSV is following the design of that system. For Crypto, it’s BSV or bust. There are many challenges ahead for BSV and nothing is guaranteed, but at least I know I’m holding Bitcoin with BSV and not an impostor.

Crypto markets were the height of irrationality in 2017. It may take until 2020 to clear the air. An ugly bear market will probably get uglier.

Once the bear market lets up I expect BSV to be the only viable long term crypto coin.